Mesarthim & Stardancer _____________________________________________________________________________________________
Imagine a world so barren, so sunbaked that nothing would grow there. Kilometers of nothing
but glaring sand in every direction. Now imagine NOT being able to imagine anything but that
empty vista.
Imagine two people scratching a life out of that monotonous place. People so used to
making do, or doing without, that they learned to stop wanting to know about people leading
kinder lives.
Now imagine everything changing with the arrival of a child.
Not a planned-for child. Not a child of their blood. A child they could barely afford.
A child whose presence brought more financial hardship into their meagre lives, sleepless
nights and worry- but also joy.
His name was Luke.
They didn't give him his name; or theirs, but they tried to give him everything else .
The woman was a gentle soul . All quiet patience and soft hugs to match her heart. She
could still remember a kinder life beneath one sun and cities as high as one could see ;where
music and friends were a part of everyday life.
She wanted her little boy( and he was hers) to imagine such things and know that they
existed in a somewhere he would one day be.
It made her happy when other settlers exclaimed at how beautiful a boy Luke was ;as
beautiful a child as anyone had ever seen on Tatooine. But it also angered her to hear them
say that so delicate a boy would be of little use to them on a hard-scrabble moisture farm .
There were not many in the desolate farming community who expected such a child to survive
to adulthood at all.
Her husband's gruff response was always that he would 'toughen up' the boy enough.
That made Beru cringe too.
Strong, yes. She wanted the tiny little boy with white-blond hair and transparent blue
eyes to grow up to be a strong, resilient man; but not a hardened , worn one like her husband.
Like everyone else who clung to a hostile desert that made men old before their time ; or
broke their hearts and took their lives.
Luke was four.
An active, precocious four- and already bored with the few educational tapes he could
play on a battered handviewer.
Beru saw the hungry curiosity growing and knew that it was time to feed and encourage
his imagination.
So it was for Luke that Owen Lars relented and took credits from the family 'emergency'
fund to buy a ' new' holo-receiver.
Children change everything; and the holo-receiver changed the Lars' household.
It became the viewport on a universe of sights and sounds lightyears from the Rim Worlds, and Luke was mesmerized by it.
The days and months that passed were full of questions now; about the places and beings and incredible things the new com showed him. Luke began to understand that all the sparkling points of light he could see in the black sky above their home were the worlds he saw on the holo-news. He mimicked alien languages and mannerisms, entertaining his Aunt as she went about her daily work; and he anticipated the time just after Second sunset when his Uncle would turn on the wonderful machine.
It was one such evening , while the main government news was on, that the little boy saw
something wonderful.
A festival, on a Coreworld whose name he couldn't pronounce, was given just a few minutes
of news coverage. There were brightly lit buildings, people enjoying music and food, and there
was a tree.
Beru explained that patiently- what trees were- as she carried the little boy into the kitchen for his night-snack. Large plants that grew in the ground. They needed a great deal of water.
Tree? The boy repeated the word carefully. The oddly shaped thing hadn't resembled any
he'd seen on his travelogue datatapes, and the one at the Zima festival had been inside a
building. It was pretty and sparkly.
So Beru explained how the people on Nesereddin did that for their holiday. They put pretty
things on trees and remembered people they loved and made special food. It made them happy.
Luke wanted to be like the happy people on the holonews. He wanted a happy tree, just a
little one. The people of Nes'sidin had so many, he said, could his Aunt ask them for one?
Ah, he was a heartbreaker with those eyes!
A 'happy tree' on Tatooine! The incongruity of the thought made her smile.
So she just smiled, and hummed his favorite melody as she carried Luke to bed. As she tucked
the therma-wrap around his small shoulders she knew what she had to do.
The universe was big, and he was small. His wish was even smaller compared to the things he
would want someday- things she and her husband would not be able to provide. This only took
money.
It would be an extravagance, and it would die- but the memory of it would last a lifetime,
Beru knew. Luke was worth it.
Owen only argued a little. It was worth the loss of long-saved credits to see the happiness on his wife's face when he brought the packing crate from Mos Eisely a month later.
It was the greenest thing either of them had seen in over ten years, and it's sweet-sharp
scent perfumed the homestead's air. The arborist who had packed it had even thought to
include a small packet of bright paper ornaments.
During the night, while Luke was asleep, the little plant was placed in his room. The
sparkling paper trinkets, and bits of bright colored plastics from his Uncle's repair boxes,
decorated it.
It was the first thing Luke saw when he woke, and he could only stare at it in wonder.
For a long time he dared not touch it. Then he examined it in awe, touching it's flexible
branches, inhaling its aroma, marveling at the soft black soil it grew in. The wet dirt had
a rich smell too.
Day after day, the little boy rearranged the trinkets and marveled at the glistening wonder
of his 'happy tree' until, at last, it withered in the hostile climate, browned and died.
On that day he carefully put the shiny ornaments in his treasure box and let his Uncle take
the dead tree to the compost bin.
As the years passed, and Luke grew into a young man, he grew more and more dissatisfied
with the monochrome life of Tatooine. The images of far away places and people called to
him with a hungry voice that would not be denied.
When he was angry at his fate, and at his guardians, he went to his treasure box. and took
out the fragile paper decorations that had once decorated the only Zima tree that had ever
been on Tatooine.
The memory took his breath away still.
********************
Nineteen years later, standing amid the towering trees of an alien world, Luke Skywalker
breathed in a scent he had not experienced since that morning his eyes had opened to see
the little tree his Aunt and Uncle had given him.
For half of all the credits they owned, they had bought a dream and a memory that would
remain with him until he could remember no more. The farm was gone, they were gone, the
innocent child he had been was gone- but the celebration of life went on.
The trees above him were spangled with stars now, their branches held the suns and worlds
of the galaxy like gifts.
This was a celebration too.
It was an odd memory to have return now. A small kitchen, the taste of warm milk, and the kind face of a woman long dead explaining how many different kind of celebrations there were in the universe - in life.
The brilliant colors of exploding fireworks rained down above Endors' forest as Luke worked
to pile the fragrant branches of a young evergreen tree into a bier.
The memory of his 'happy tree' was as strong and fresh as the scent of the branches he
gathered.
There were more trees around him now than he could have ever imagined. They were as big as
his dreams of his father had been. They would last as long as his memory of Anakin Skywalker's
final smile and the way Owen and Beru Lars had smiled when they gave him a tree from another
world with glittering treasures in it's branches.
The little desert boy had not understood how people could celebrate memories, but now the
man he had become did.
They had all sacrificed for him, Luke fought back tears as he touched a burning branch to
the funeral bier he had constructed.
They had all died for him.
Lifting his burning eyes to the sky, Luke watched fireworks drape tree branches already glittering with stars , and remembered.